Titel
Communicative signals during joint attention promote neural processes of infants and caregivers
Autor*in
Moritz Köster
University of Regensburg, Institute for Psychology
Autor*in
Radoslaw Martin Cichy
Freie Universität Berlin, Faculty of Education and Psychology
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Abstract
Communicative signals such as eye contact increase infants’ brain activation to visual stimuli and promote joint attention. Our study assessed whether communicative signals during joint attention enhance infant-caregiver dyads’ neural responses to objects, and their neural synchrony. To track mutual attention processes, we applied rhythmic visual stimulation (RVS), presenting images of objects to 12-month-old infants and their mothers (n = 37 dyads), while we recorded dyads’ brain activity (i.e., steady-state visual evoked potentials, SSVEPs) with electroencephalography (EEG) hyperscanning. Within dyads, mothers either communicatively showed the images to their infant or watched the images without communicative engagement. Communicative cues increased infants’ and mothers’ SSVEPs at central-occipital-parietal, and central electrode sites, respectively. Infants showed significantly more gaze behaviour to images during communicative engagement. Dyadic neural synchrony (SSVEP amplitude envelope correlations, AECs) was not modulated by communicative cues. Taken together, maternal communicative cues in joint attention increase infants’ neural responses to objects, and shape mothers’ own attention processes. We show that communicative cues enhance cortical visual processing, thus play an essential role in social learning. Future studies need to elucidate the effect of communicative cues on neural synchrony during joint attention. Finally, our study introduces RVS to study infant-caregiver neural dynamics in social contexts.
Stichwort
HyperscanningInfancyJoint attentionOstensive cuesSteady-state visually evoked potentialsVisual perception
Objekt-Typ
Sprache
Englisch [eng]
Persistent identifier
https://phaidra.univie.ac.at/o:2045022
Erschienen in
Titel
Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience
Band
65
ISSN
1878-9293
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Verlag
Elsevier BV
Projektnummer
I 4332-B – Austrian Science Fund (FWF)
Projektnummer
803370 – European Union (all programmes)
Erscheinungsdatum
2024
Zugänglichkeit
Rechteangabe
© 2023 The Author(s)

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